


Instability

by Coyotecom



Category: Original Work, zombies - Fandom
Genre: Blood and Violence, End of the World, Gun Violence, Hippies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-02-24 11:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13212837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coyotecom/pseuds/Coyotecom
Summary: Story I originally wrote for 4chan's /lit/ board in '07 that a friend has encouraged me to rewrite into a much longer fiction and post. I hope the people who read it enjoy it.





	1. West

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> World ends, zombies attack, things get weird.

 

The end of the world finally came in 2034, and nobody was really ready for what happened. The government was very clear that it wasn’t zombies though. Nobody really listened to them by the time the news stations were off the air and the internet was dead. It really didn’t matter by that point. People were too busy dealing with the money being gone, the power going out, the water shutting off, and the hordes of screaming maniacs running around killing everything they could lay their hands on. Whether or not they were zombies was kind of academic since without the comforts provided by modern living, entire cities were dying.

I gathered my things and I left my home. I met with people to get guns, ammo, and provisions, then tried to collect my friend Tazzy, but I couldn’t find her so I left a note. Tazz had family, they’d watch out for her. I had to get to Mauze; that was the most important thing. Mauze would know what to do. I left Oklahoma and headed west, planning on going north once I was in California, but I knew this route by heart and it would be the safest and fastest, if not the shortest. I couldn’t contact anyone with the power out and Mauze was in Fort Jones last time we spoke, but I didn’t have much time to catch up to her.

I was halfway across the Mojave when the radiator blew out. I knew I should have had that heat sensor checked. I buried the truck in scrub brush about a hundred yards off the road and left a marker I could find it by for when I could get parts at the next town. I took five gallons of water, five rations, my leather jacket, a wide brimmed hat and goggles, my pistol, and started back on the road on foot, hoping I’d hitch a ride to the next town before I ran out. I was two days out of home and losing time fast, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I walked until sundown and made camp.

I had been walking for three days when I met the hippies. I’d just made camp for the evening a bit off the road to be safe but so far that nobody would see me. I hadn’t seen a car yet but I was hoping for a miracle. I got ran over instead. I was busy cooking my evening meal when I heard the engine of that old VW bus rumbling my way from the east. I finished it and drank some water then hid my extras in case there was trouble, then sat down to wait. When I heard it getting closer I went to stand up but instead of hearing them slow down, I heard the van go off the road towards me and a scream. I had enough time to turn halfway and throw my left arm up and then I didn’t remember anything.

When I came to, I was lying flat on my back on the floor of what I assumed was the bus. The sun was coming up, that much I could tell by the light outside the windows. I could also tell we’d stopped and the reason was the flashing blue and white lights. I made to get up, and felt a knife pressed into my throat and a woman’s voice said, “You be cool, and nobody has to die today.” I could feel that my jacket, and with it my pistol were gone so I lay still and did as the nice crazy lady said. Her perfume filled my nostrils as I tried not to gag.

“There a problem, officer?” I heard from the driver seat up past my head. “You kids need to turn back. The governor of California has declared a state of emergency and all travel into the state is restricted. Turn your vehicle around and head back the way you came or I’ll have to take you all into custody,” said a man outside. Things had been getting bad with California for a while and they’d stepped up travel restrictions to the rest of the United States in the last few years. Most were pretty sure they were about to finally vote to leave the Union and me and my friends had speculated on whether there’d be a civil war about it. Looks like the apocalypse was the last straw for the woman in charge over there.

“I’ve got our travel papers right here, sir,” I heard the hammer of my custom Governor pistol being cocked. I drew in a breath to warn the patrolman but before I could, I heard the retort as the gun went off, presumably right in the man’s face. I doubt the he even waited for him to hit the ground before the man in the driver seat floored it and spewed gravel from the shoulder as he sped on down the road.

“Hey Kent, our hitchhiker’s awake,” another man’s voice said from deeper in the van. I heard another man chuckle, the woman sitting on my stomach cackled, and the driver intoned, 

“Is that right? Well then, how about you tell us about this gold you were talking about while you slept, sweet hitchhiker?” Talking in our sleep ran in my family but I’d never been known to do it. Then again, I’d never been hit by a bus. 

“What gold?” I asked, playing dumb. Hopefully I didn’t say anything damning while I was out.

The woman held a piece of folded up paper in front of my face and pushed the knife against my neck again. Thankfully it wasn’t very sharp, but you don’t need a lot to drive a point home, if you catch my drift. I closed my eyes for a second and then opened them to focus on what was being held in front of me. It was a map showing a route from Mauze’s mother’s house to her property up in the mountains, with a dumb path using only backroads and coming up the mountain to the trailer there from the wrong direction I made as a joke once, with the entire area marked with a big yellow triangle marked “GOLD” around it. That stupid map. I nearly told them there wasn’t any money up there, just a meeting place and a few odd and ends when the driver spoke up again. 

“The only reason you’re alive is because you’re gonna lead us straight to that gold and whatever else you got squirreled away up there with your prepper friends.”

I thought better of talking myself into a shallow ditch for a grave and lied for all I was worth, “Oh THAT gold! Well, I guess ya’ll got me there. I’ll lead you to it, but that map only shows how to get to the area it’s in, not to the gold itself. We have that hidden up in the mountains. It’s under a tree stump in a logging forest, we need to get the other half of the map at my friends place. That first stop on the map, there,” I tried to indicate with my left hand but as soon as I tried to move it my shoulder lit up with pain and I cursed.

“Sorry about the arm, my man,” one of the other voices from earlier. “Berkeley was driving and didn’t wanna stop. Ivy did, and there was an argument over the wheel. We were off the road before we knew what was happening. Thought you were dead for sure.” 

“Tough bastard,” the man who I assumed was Berkeley put in. 

“I assume you’re Ivy then?” I said to the woman who was still using me as a cushion. 

“That’s right, sweet hitchhiker,” she laughed. 

“The talkative one is Cornell. And this!” she said as she rose up, stepped on my chest in what must have been an expensive wooden wedge heel and climbed over the front seat, “Is my main man, Kent!” She giggled loudly and the van swerved dizzyingly as her legs disappeared over the seat.

My arm was well and truly busted. I could feel the shoulder was out of socket, and the skin was abraded like it had been run over. The prosthetic forearm under my skin felt like sluggish and everything down my left side hurt like hell, as well as my right shoulder blade. The wire filaments that controlled the arm were probably out of alignment because of the shoulder. 

Gotta love designer prosthetics.

Had the arm from the elbow down replaced inside after an accident where I caught a two-by-four that fell off a roof a year ago. Had wired reflexes put in so that I’d just dodge the next one. Guess that didn’t work out either. Skin was still mine, they just gloved my entire forearm and spread the skin over the internals. New materials that your body doesn’t react to, doesn’t rust, wears down real slow. Good for ten years before I’d need a replacement. Looks like it might be sooner now.

“Where’s my jacket?” I croaked out. My mouth was getting dry from the close air in the van. “Cornell is sitting on it,” Berkeley answered. 

Just great. 

“Ya’ll mind if I sit up?” I asked, “It’s a little hard to breathe down here. I promise I’ll behave,”

“Be my guest,” the driver, Kent answered. “One funny look from you and Ivy will gut you like a pig though.” This got a round of laughter from the van as Ivy flashed the knife in my face and squealed mockingly. Cornell produced my squashed jacket from the seat behind the one I was in and I struggled into it, zipped it halfway and stuck my left hand into the inside right breast pocket to hold it steady. I tied it in place with a bandana from one of the pockets. The whole thing smelled funny.

“You a lefty?” Berkeley asked as I finally got situated and tried to get comfortable. “Yeah,” I lied again. I’m ambidextrous, but best they believe they got me completely beat for now.

“One of ya’ll sitting on my hat too?” I asked hopefully.

“Uh, no. We kinda left it behind. The goggles too.” Berkeley provided.

“Well, I’m pretty much blind during the day without them,” I griped as I slunk down in the seat.

“Don’t you worry about it,” Kent spoke up from the front. “You’re not gonna need ‘em. We got thirty gallons of the good stuff, and this here wagon gets fifty to the gallon. We’re not making any stops until we get to where we’re going and once we’re there, we’ll be your eyes when we get there.”

They did stop of course to switch drivers a couple times but it was a twenty hour drive between switching out and stopping for food and other things.. That tub only really got up to 60 on flat roads and we were going up into the mountains for the last five hours of it. I decided along the way I was gonna kill all of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well well well. Let's see where this takes us.


	2. North

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get rolling and other things heat up. Somebodies bound to die.

Bakersfield was a ghost town when we stopped to get food. I directed them to a small shop I knew of. The owner was an old man and had a shotgun under his register and I was hoping he’d still be around defending the place, but no such luck. Ivy lead Cornell and Berkeley in raiding the place while I sat in the van with Kent and had a little chat. He was just full of questions now that his attention wasn’t on the road.

“So how far up on that ridge is the gold?” 

“All the way.” 

“Where’d ya get it?” 

“Bought it.” 

“You bought it?” 

“Yeah, gold was selling low for once so we bought as much as we thought we’d ever need.” 

“Then you just dug a hole and dumped it in there like it was trash.” 

“Didn’t want anyone else to come looking for it and find it.” 

“What happens if we get there and your girlfriend took it all?” 

“She ain’t my girlfriend.” 

“Don’t care. Answer the question.” 

“I guess I’m dead but that’s not gonna happen.” 

“Oh? And why’s that?” 

“She’s in Montana with the rest of our fortune and all our stuff.” 

“What the hell were you doing south of Vegas then?” 

“I got sent to Oklahoma to get some things and I was on my way back. What were you doing south of Vegas?” 

“I have the gun, I ask the questions. You answer.” 

“You’re the boss.” 

“What kind of gun is this?” 

“Smith and Wesson Governor. I had a longer barrel and a cowboy grip added so I could hold it easier. Fires .410 shotgun shells.” 

“Must have cost a pretty penny.” 

“It did, actually. The Machinist owed me a favor though so I got the engraving done for free.” 

“How much gold is there in the stash?” 

“Enough for everybody.” 

“We’ll see about that.” He laughed. 

He took a long drag off his cigarette and stares at me for a minute like he’s trying to remember something before asking me the most obvious question in the world that I’d tried to steer him away from, “What the hell were you doing walking? You think you’re a courier or something?” 

I sighed and settled back. “My truck broke down so I was heading to the next town to get parts. I was about a day or two out from there when we ‘met’,” I did a one sided air quote around met and he laughed, smoke puffing from between his perfect white teeth. These kids hadn’t been living rough long, I could tell.

He took another pull on his cancer stick and blew the smoke languidly across the cab and out the window as he watched his friends gathering groceries. They’d been in there an awful long time. Looking through the window I could see Berkeley piling stuff beside the register but the other two were out of site. As he sat a 30 of cheap beer on the counter, Kent hollered at him, “Could you fucks hurry the fuck up?! We don’t have all goddamn week! Where the fuck are Ivy and Cornell?!” 

Berkeley jerked liked he’d been shot at the question and stammered, “T-they’re in the office! Tr-trying to open up the s-safe. Yeah.”

It couldn’t have been more obvious that Cornell was in the back fucking Kent’s woman if there was a window into the office, but I didn’t say shit about it. Instead I decided to distract them all from the impending fight. “Hey boss, ask Berk to grab me an e-cig and two bottles of the coffee flavor for it. Oh and a pint of tequila. I’ll need my strength up once we get to the mountain.”

Berkeley heard me I guess because he shouted back with a little more spine than before, “I’m not getting him shit!” 

This set Kent off though. “GET THE MAN HIS SMOKES AND DRINK OR I’LL BLOW YOUR FUCKING BALLS OFF, BERK!” and he hammered the point home by firing two shots off into the window the of store. Berkeley dove behind the counter and I heard a door slam in the back. A second later Cornell poked his head out the door and asked what all the shooting was about. 

“Hurry your balls up you dickheads! I wanna be rid of this old fuck before I’m his age!” He was pretty sullen now. I guess way down he knew something was wrong, and Berkeley denying his order before he could even give it showed he wasn’t in as much control of his little gang as he thought.

Three shots left. Still more than I could take in a fight, but I if I could keep him talking maybe I could get them to kill each other.

“Damn man, he really-,” I began, but Kent cut me off. 

“Shut the fuck up before I put a bullet in your mouth,” 

“No sweat boss,” I answered and sank back in the seat. Well, damn.

Soon Berkeley and Cornell were loading everything into the back of the van as Ivy came out spritzing herself with too much perfume. Berkeley hit me with my tequila and ecig, the got in the driver seat. Kent and Ivy got in the seat behind mine. Cornell climbed into the front passenger seat holding the old side-by-side double barrel shotgun from under the register, and shot a dirty look my way, but I ignored him as I chewed open the package of my vape then twisted the cap off the tequila with my teeth. I took a long pull off the bottle and then dragged on the small, cigarette shaped vape until my lungs burned.

Berkeley was pulling out of the parking lot and back onto the road as we all settle back in. He reached into the bag he had with him and pulled out of a package with a pot leaf and a famous rapper on it. I fucking hate this state. 

“Look what they had in there! I fucking love this state! I grabbed all they had.” This got whoops from the rest of the van, and even a smile out of Cornell, who had been in a bad mood. 

“Well we just got ourselves a rolling damn party don’t we?” I asked sarcastically. “Head west until you see I-5 then go north on that until you see Dunsmuir. The next part of the map is there.” I took another shot and then laid across the seats. “I’m taking a nap. Wake me if you get confused, and try to stay out of big cities. In fact, get off of five and take the east route north around Sac so you don’t get bogged down in traffic.” I advised.

“What traffic?” Ivy asked snidely as she accepted the spliff passed back to her by Cornell and passed it to Kent, “Everybody’s dead.” 

“Not everybody,” I said as I closed my eyes. “There’s a reason I was carrying that gun into a state where guns are illegal. There’s crazies running around just killing folks and taking what they want.” I deadpanned. 

This earned a smoky guffaw from Kent that lead to them all laughing like hell. I felt the barrel of my gun press into my temple heard the hammer cock. “You’re not wrong, you old bastard.” Ivy said as she shoved at the side of my head. 

“Ya still need me to show you which house the map is in, at the least. And then I need to lead you to the stump.” I grit out between my teeth.

She dropped back into her seat laughing and Kent took the gun from her and decocked it. At least one of them wasn’t a complete dumbass. Still a dumbass, but he made sure I was always watched and that I was in the middle so I couldn’t get to anything without someone being in the way. Cornell flipped through the stations on the radio, grimacing since all there seemed to be was a prerecorded warning about the emergency on the air read by the governor herself.

Eventually he gave up and one of them plugged a cellphone into a tapedeck adapter and they listened to old as hell rock music and shitty modern rap until I passed out from boredom. Berkeley got us onto the I-5 without a hitch despite having six beers and a huge joint in his system, but I guess it helped that Ivy was mostly right and there really wasn’t any traffic. A few cars crowded the onramps like they’d died on the spot waiting their turns to get on and been abandoned, and a few times we whizzed past a few loaded up cars and trucks headed south. The central valley was a wasteland and large parts of it were on fire, but that’s California for you.

Outside of Sacramento I drew a line through the roads I wanted them to take to avoid the city. Cornell thought I was being too cautious, but when we got to the outskirts you could tell it was hell in that place. The smoke filled the horizon and there were abandoned cars and military vehicles on the roads so thick we had to slow to a crawl to get past them on the shoulder. Berkeley followed my directions after that. I’d seen the same thing back east, near other large cities like Phoenix. 

It was always the worst near the cities.

We didn’t even get close to the San Francisco metro area after that. As we passed Stockton I wondered if friends of mine were doing ok in that hell. I tried to take my mind off it and told myself I did what I could before by offering to move them all out to the compound in Montana before the end happened, but there wasn’t much I could do to convince them. I’d check on them if I got the chance. Chances seemed pretty slim at the moment.

I checked my arm when we were getting near to Dunsmuir, and it still looked like hammered beef. The tequila had loosened the muscles up enough for them to stop hurting so damn much and I had half the pint left. I was gonna need it for my shoulder. At least I wasn’t bleeding. That would have complicated things. Just oozing blood a bit from a few scrapes, but it was scabbing nicely. Soon we were crossing the bridge, and I directed Berkeley down the small town roads until we stopped in front of a two story house that looked like it had seen much better days. Luckily, it wasn’t burned to the ground, but it had obviously been looted, so there wasn’t any way I was going to find shit in this place for weapons. Dammit.

“Alright, this is the place. The map should be in the upstairs in a hidden safe. There’s probably still running water here so you can take cold showers in the downstairs, I’ll go get the map.” I said as I started to shove the side doors open. 

Cornell stopped me by grabbing my bad shoulder, making me want to kill him harder, “Hold the fuck up. You think we’re just gonna let you wander around free? One of us stays with you, and if you try anything, you’re dead.” 

I put my hand up and bowed my head in supplication. “Alright, alright! Keep an eye on me, doesn’t make a difference. Ya’ll have the firepower, I’m already at your mercy. Even if I got away, I’d be dead in a week with this arm and no food out here.” I lied. I knew very well where to get food around here, the river nearby was so full of fish, they nearly jumped into the frying pan ready to be eaten.

He let me out of the door then, watching me like a hawk, and Kent passed him the gun. “If he runs, shoot him in the legs.” He said as he walked up to the front of the house with Ivy. “You coming, Berkeley?” he asked his friend.  

“Naw man, I’m wiped the fuck out. I been in this driver seat for nine hundred miles. I’m gonna take a nap then probably hit that shower like the old fucker said.” He laid back against the driver side door and cracked open another beer and blazed himself another joint. His fifth since yesterday. Cornell rolled his eyes and gestured towards the house with the gun. I lead him in the front door and we could already hear the water running in the bathroom off the kitchen in the back. I lead him through the door on the left of the living room, through a bedroom, and up the stairs at the rear.

The house was a total wreck and with every piece of furniture splintered it seemed like. Papers were scattered everywhere and I could smell the small animals that had been living in the wreckage before we arrived and scared them off. Nature works fast this far out from the big cities. It’s only been three weeks since the world came crashing down. The door at the top of the stairs was off its hinges, so I just shoved it down as we got there. I saw the hidden safe immediately and instead started searching the wreckage of the desk. We were right over the bathtub downstairs and a blind and deaf man could tell what Kent and Ivy were doing downstairs. Cornell was getting agitated and his finger wouldn’t leave the trigger as I pulled out the drawers of the desk and searched the contents one by one.

“This might take a while. Sounds like we’ve got time though before they’re through. Then I guess it’s your turn huh?” I said with a sideways grin. 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Cornell bit out. 

“For the shower!” I quickly added. “Your turn in the shower, before Berkeley finishes his nap outside.” I raised my hand and faced him. “What did you think I meant?” I said with another salacious grin. He fired at the floor between my feet at that, making my ears ring in the confined space but not enough that I couldn’t hear Ivy scream downstairs and Kent start roaring. Two shots left. Possibly survivable with medical treatment but I would still have to fight four people. Still not great odds. And Berkeley had the double barrel in the van.

“YOU GODDAMNED IDIOT YOU NEARLY BLEW MY HEAD OFF!” The leader of their little clan of sociopaths called from down below. 

Cornell’s eyes were wide as saucers as he realized what he’d done. “The old bastard made me do it! He wouldn’t shut the fuck up!” he called back. 

“I don’t care if he bit you in the dick! Bring me that fucking gun before you kill somebody!” Kent hollered up through the hole between my feet. I was pretty proud of the fact I wasn’t currently pissing down that hole through a pant leg.

Cornell took off downstairs and I approached the stash without hesitation. It was a pencil drawing of Coyote, the mythical figure, and he was holding a box and had a salacious grin. A punchable face if you’ve ever seen one and that’s what I did. My hand went right through the paper of the picture and into the hole in the wall behind it, impacting a metal box. I pulled the box out, hoping Mauze had left me a holdout pistol, a knife, anything at all.

My heart stopped as I opened it. There was a fist sized crystal ball and a stack of novelty steel throwing cards with razor edges. A note tucked into the box in Mauze’s handwriting calmed me down a little but I was still pretty fucked.

_Hey Coyo, took the pistol and ammo that was in here back to Montana already. If you’re reading this, sorry I left your cards and crystal behind but I figured we could play with them next time we’re up here. See you soon, try not to cut yourself._

_P.S. The bandoleer for the cards is under the box._

I searched the hole and found the bandoleer and stripped out of my coat. I strapped the idiotic cards to my upper arm, stuffed the ball in a pocket on the coat, and pulled out the tequila. The shouting from downstairs was still going but it was only a matter of time before they remembered they had a prisoner. I downed the half pint of liquor to numb me up, then slammed my shoulder into the doorjamb to force the joint back into the socket, and managed not to scream. I then struggled back into the coat and put my arm back in place. I grabbed a map of Amy’s mountain property off the wall and drew a random trail through the woods and right past where I knew a pot farm was hidden by her neighbor, and folded it up. I quickstepped down the stairs and skidded into the kitchen just as I heard Kent ask where I was.

“Found it!” I declared triumphantly as I entered the room, getting the gun pointed at my chest. 

“Jesus Christ don’t scare me like that when I have a gun in my hand you fucking idiot!” Kent yelled. Cornell looked chastised but shot me the dirtiest look yet. 

I ignored him to concentrate on addressing the gun. “Map! Map’s here! Here’s the map!” I tossed the map to the ground and Kent took the gun off me and put it in his waistband as he picked up the folded piece of paper. He examined it closely but didn’t remark on how fresh the pencil lines were or that it had us approaching from a shallow culvert.

“Well alright then. We’re almost there then.” He eyed me strangely, then looked at Cornell. He looked like he was going to ask a very pointed question about what we were arguing about, but suddenly there was a gunshot from outside. He led the way, followed by me and Cornell, with Ivy bringing up the rear as she came out of the bathroom with her hair still wet. There was another shot as we got to the front and Berkeley was standing beside the van crying with a dead woman at his feet.

“She attacked me! She came right at me with a knife when I got out of the van! I thought the first shot did her in but she slashed at my leg when I got close to her.” He sobbed. He leaned back on the minibus as he pulled another joint out of his pocket and lit it with shaking hands, dropping the shotgun to the pavement, it’s payload spent. One less problem about but I still had a lot and one was a bitch.

The woman on the ground was a mess. Half her head was gone and there was a hole through her middle. It was actually hard to tell which happened first, but I’d guess the middle. Berkeley had actually pissed his pants, so he was sent inside to wash up with Cornell while Kent, Ivy, and I got back in the van. Oddly they got into the back seat.

“We should go soon. All the shooting might have attracted others,” was all I said as the other two climbed in behind me. Kent grunted in the affirmative but Ivy didn’t say anything. Soon, Cornell and Berkeley came back, made a wide arch around the dead woman, and climbed in the front. Cornell drove us out of there and back onto the highway headed north. Nobody really said anything for a while, they just drank their beers and smoked their weed in peace. When we were about twenty miles outside town, Ivy suddenly asked, “Why was her hair blue?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Kent. Guess being a psychopath doesn't stop your feelings from being hurt when you get betrayed. Power dynamics going on between these assholes like some sort of court intrigue and there Coycoy is like a court jester.


	3. Upon a Fiery Mount

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We arrive at the original destination! About a week late from what Coy there had planned, but maybe he's not too late? Also yeah this is where the murder starts so if you're not here for that, I recommend you leave.

Cornell was driving when we hit the washout on the trail so of course he blamed me for bottoming out the van so badly the wheels weren’t even touching the ground. Said my map was bad and that I was leading them into a trap. Kept on and on the whole time they tried to push it out of the hole he’d trapped it in. Kent told him to shut the hell up when they finally gave up. 

I mean shit man, both bumpers were on the ground, the front was caved in, and none of the wheels were touching the ground because he’d bounced the suspension that hard. No way in hell I could have planned that, but I said a silent prayer to Lord Coyote for that magnificence and promised him lots of burnt offerings. They stuffed food, water, beer, and weed into their knapsacks, and Ivy dug out a pair of slightly more sensible shoes. Damn, I was hoping she’d break an ankle like an idiot, but I can’t have all the luck I guess.

I got a few bottles of water for myself since I hadn’t had anything but tequila in two days and we started up the trail. It really did not take long for everyone else to start hating life as much as I already did. For one thing, we were ten miles from where we should be, when it’s definitely only two miles from the road to the top of this ridge if you come in from the main road.  Second, they had been riding in that van for a long damn time apparently and weren’t used to the legs carrying them farther than from one end of a shopping mall to the other. I could have done the entire track in a few hours without them, but I needed them tired, sore, and hateful. So I made sure that every damn twist in that trail was thoroughly examined and that I had double checked every single bush with the map. The map I’d made up literally an hour ago and wasn’t actually following.

Ivy whined, Berkeley whined harder, Cornell groused, and Kent stewed. I did eventually take them up to the trailer after about five hours wandering lost in the woods. 

“There she is! Casa de Mauze! Ain’t she a site to behold?” I beamed at the double wide trailer sitting on what must have been the only patch of actual grass in three miles. Everything else was completely covered in pine needles. It was pretty clear nobody had been here in a while to be honest.

“Looks like a fucking dump,” Kent said as he walked up the front steps. He kicked in the front door and swung the gun around the living room like he expected a SWAT team to pop out of the fireplace. I waited out on the deck with the rest until he yelled it was all clear, then started walking over towards the other end of the garden, hoping they wouldn’t notice. Cornell did.

“Where in the FUCK do you think you’re going you old bastard?” he called, more to alert the rest than to stop me. Berkeley came out of the trailer with holding the gun, but I could tell he didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger after that woman back in Dunsmuir. Unfortunately, Cornell did have the spine as he took the gun and pointed it at me. 

“Hey fellas!” I smiled my best salesman grin and held my hand up in the air. “You guys wanna see something awesome?” My smile got even bigger. It almost hurt I was showing so many teeth.

“Tell us what it is first, before I shoot you.” Cornell deadpanned. He really did not like me but the feeling was mutual and I was going to enjoy killing him soonish so I let it slide. 

“Well friends, it starts with an S, and rhymes with ‘it’s tons of weed’,” I said and almost giggled.

I hate the stuff personally, but I can tell a stoner when I smell them and Berkeley smelled like he’d smoke crack if you convinced him it had THC in it, and Cornell never said no to any of the blunts getting passed around in the van on the trip here. Probably fancied himself a genius and everyone else a plebian who just didn’t understand him. That’s probably why Ivy fucked him and sucked Berk, while her “main man” sat in the van with the me. Self confidence will get you a lot in the world. Or well, it used to. Now it’ll probably get your throat cut and your body thrown in a ditch. We’ll see I guess.

“Fucking where?” Berkeley called to me, running up to my side, and in between Cornell, the gun, and me. 

“Right this way my fine feather haired friend!” I said and put my good arm around his shoulders and lead him to the trail under a bush that went down to the neighboring farm, about a hundred yards down the hill. At the end of the trail was a what would get mistaken for an overgrown hedge back in civilization, but out here looked like nothing more than a solid wall of prickly leaves and poisonous berries. I lead them through the wall and into a hexagonal garden of pot plants, each as tall as a man and sitting in their own planters placed on the ground. Overhead pipes the same color as tree bark dripped enriched water at a delicately timed rate to maximize the nutrient flow to each plant to ensure potency and growth. In other words it was a super illegal grow-op in a state where it wasn’t even illegal to grow weed, it was just taxed all to hell, so people still had to grow it illegally to make money on it. California would be the single only state to legalize weed but still keep the cartels in business.

“Sweet Mary, Mother of Juana,” Berkeley breathed as he took in the sight of the marijuana growing in great huge bushes all around him. 

“There’s trees for days in here,” Cornell said as he too gawked at the expansive grow-op. 

“Mhm. They have these planted all over the mountainside, deep under the canopy of pine trees,” I said. “I bet it beats the hell out of that store bought shit too,” I grinned, nudging Berkeley.

Just as I said that, the sounds of lovemaking could be heard echoing across the valley. You’d think they’d at least close the windows in the house and I tried hard not to think about what they were doing and where in the house. Being around these animals made my skin crawl enough without them rutting like wild elk every chance they got. 

“Sounds like they’re finishing what they started this morning, eh?” I grinned to hide that I’d nearly wretched. Cornell looked me right in the eye and boy he looked mad. “The shower up here doesn’t have as much water pressure. The spring isn’t as high up above the house as it was in Dunsmuir. Gonna be a cold one too, unless they started a fire,” I casually observed as I watched Berkeley fondle one of the plants in particular like a drunken prom date. That woman was loud as hell when she wanted to be.

“Berk, you wait here with him. I’m gonna go get Kent and Ivy and let them know what we found here,” Cornell said as he started off towards the trail. I waited until he was outside of the garden and I turned back towards Berkeley. 

“Hey kid,” I said to him as I drew the crystal ball from my pocket, “You like magic tricks?” I smiled and held the ball out into a beam of sunlight, and there was a bright flash. Suddenly some of the pine needles on the ground were on fire.

“Whoa!” He said and stumbled back. I waved my hand between the ball and the ground a few times to show him it was safe, then held it up again and the flash came again as more needles caught fire. “Pretty cool, eh?” I said as I made the ball of quartz dance over my  fingers, making little spots of fire pop into existence as I danced it around the clearing.

“Get out the grinder I know is in your pocket and grab a nug off of that tree, Berk,” I said as I walked back over to him, leaving a smoking trail in the ground. He quickly obeyed and set to mashing up a bud from the marijuana plant. Soon he had it ground into a fine yet sticky consistency and was plucking it into a blunt he’d poured out onto the ground.

“Alright kiddo, for my next trick, I want you to put that fat joint in your mouth and close your eyes. I’m gonna use the light of the sun to blaze that shit up proper and natural. Gonna be the smoothest smoke you ever had. You gotta keep your eyes closed or the flash will blind you, and your friends will kill me if I blind you, alright?”

“Fuck yeah man! Gimme that natural high!” he said giddily as he put the tip of the blunt into his outstretched lips and closed his eyes. I raised the crystal ball to my eyes and looked through it for a spare moment and time seemed to slow down. Smoke filled its interior, and gave way to a world aflame. I watched as the fire seemed to spread faster and faster before my eyes through the glass. I could hear singing in a language I don’t understand, and men screaming. My heartbeat like train cars crossing a gap in the rail as the moment crept on. Deep in the glass, I almost saw a dancing figure. I was probably getting high as shit since that entire clearing was on fire at this point and I was kinda standing in a pillar of smoke from the pine needles and weed burning around me.

I raised the bauble over my head, towards the sunbeam, lining it up just right. “Now Berk! Breath in deep!” I yelled as the flash came and the end of the huge joint he’d rolled exploded into flame. I stared up into the ball as I heard him gasp and cough. “So Berkeley. How are you enjoying your trip to the Golden Triangle?” I asked. 

“It fucking rocks man!” he croaked as  he pulled hard on the joint again. 

“I figured you’d like Acapulco Gold after smoking all that cheap store shit all this time,” I said, looking down at him with my hand clutching the ball over my head still. I wanted him to get it. God he’s dense. I actually thought about letting him live for a moment then decided I was just getting sentimental because I was stoned.

“Mhm, mhm.” He hummed as he enjoyed the smoke. “Wait. Golden Triangle? Like on the map?” 

“That’s right,” 

“Is that what it meant?” 

“Yup.” 

He stared  at the joint in his hand for a second giggling, then I saw it finally! The clarity in his eyes! “There isn’t any gold! It’s just weed!” he cried as he stood up in a rush, realizing he was sitting in a circle of fire with a madman holding a rock that shot flames.

Too late though, I brought the crystal ball down on his temple with a sickening thud and he pitched sideways and smashed the other side of his head on the planter he’d plucked his last smoke from. I used his shirt to wipe the blood from the ball and then set him and everything around him on fire and retreated to the edge of the garden.

The trees were catching fast as the trails of fire I left between them leapt up to the lower branches that hadn’t been cleared yet this year. All of the plants were on fire now. I pocketed the crystal ball and started yelling his name as loud as I could across the clearing until the smoke was too much to bear and then I pitched out of the bushes at the edge and onto the trail covering my face in my hands and running up the trail coughing and yelling for him to keep running. I pelted up the trail like the devil himself was after me and ran smack into Kent, knocking us both down.

I lay gasping the semi-fresh air for a moment then Cornell hauled me up by my lapels and shook me like a ragdoll. 

“What the fuck did you do to Berkeley!” he screamed in my face, spittle flying as he raged at me. 

“He was right in front of me! He went through the bushes before I did! I don’t know what happened. We were getting faded in the garden and suddenly all the piping started spraying fire! I think it was a trap set up by the growers. One of them must’ve still been around. Probably thought we were feds man!” 

“BULLSHIT” he screamed in my face and threw me to the ground. Just then there was a loud snap and a branch fell from overhead and crushed the barrier. Berkeley’s body was clearly there right beside the exit, and clearly burned to a crisp.

Ivy screamed and hid her face in Kent’s chest, and Cornell punched me twice across the face. “I’m gonna kill you, you old fuck!” he yelled, starting to throttle me. Kent quickly wrestled him off me. 

“Don’t kill him yet! We still don’t have the gold!” he grunted as they struggled together. The flames began creeping up the hill our way, eating the thick carpet of pine needles like a hungry demon as it consumed the forest. It seemed to be spreading faster than it should have though, and I’d swear I saw gouts of flame erupt from further in the forest to hit other trees, loud snapping sounds marking each eruption. I was probably still high as shit.

“Oh god no!” I wailed. Tears weren’t hard to fake with a face full of pine tar smoke. “Oh god Berk! He was the good one. He never did me any wrong. Oh god I saw him ahead of me as we ran! I swear it Kent! I was right behind him when he went through the bushes, I don’t know why he went back in!” I pushed it to the hilt as I lay there with tears streaming down my face and blood leaking from my mouth and nose.

“We have to go Kent!” Ivy said as she dragged at his shirt. She was right. The flames were getting heavier and coming closer every minute. They’d be on us soon. 

“We have to get above the trees before this turns into a crown fire. It’s gonna spread hast as fuck. We’ll be fine up on the ridge,” I lied yet again. I never did believe in telling the truth if it would just make things worse. Kent threw me the towel that Ivy had been using on her hair and told me to clean myself up and we all started up the trail again. I looked back at Mauze’s little mountainside farm and kinda felt bad I’d doomed the entire place. She was gonna kill me.

I led them further up the mountain, taking the gravel road first up, then down into a valley, then leading them up a deer trail until we were above the last of the trees. We made camp once I said we were safe for the night. Kent and Ivy collapsed straight onto the ground. Kent took the first watch, and Cornell took the second. They wouldn’t let me keep watch by myself though. I made a fire once the sun went down, careful to ask for a lighter from Cornell instead of using the looking glass again.

“Where’s your lighter, Mr. Survivalist?” he asked me sarcastically as he dug his out of his pocket. To answer, I pulled out my e-cig and took a puff from it as I lit the tinder I’d made out of crumbled bark and dry leaves. “I don’t smoke,” I said as vapor rolled out from between my teeth and up over my face. He grunted again and settled down to watch the fire as I sat back against a rock and watched the world below us burn. I wondered if Mauze’s farm was already cinders as I drifted off to sleep.

I woke up once in the night and the fire was low. I could see Cornell eyeing Ivy across the fire. I closed my eyes again and dreamed I heard tires on gravel far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha did you see that? He totally just caved his fucking skull in with a fancy rock. Poor Berk.


	4. Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our hero continues to get on everybodies nerves, things come to a head as a storm approaches.

Kent kicked me awake the next day with little fanfare and I groaned as I pushed myself to my feet with my one good arm. My other arm actually felt much better, and I could flex the fingers fine. I was still holding out though. Three on one and with two shots left in the gun, I still couldn’t risk anything. Cornell had it in for me and Ivy still had that nasty little knife of hers stuck in her waistband. We all drank a bottle of water as Kent asked me how much farther we had to go. 

“About another day’s walk and you’ll be rid of me. Or I you. Depends on your point of view,” I said as we picked up the packs and headed out. I was carrying Berkeley’s now. Cornell had his own, and Kent carried his and Ivy’s. She didn’t carry anything.

Kent led the way, with Ivy beside him. Cornell brought up the rear, making sure I was in the middle. The forest below us was now fully aflame and I’m sure that the guys on the spacestation probably had a spectacular view of the smoke. They probably had other things on their mind besides the regularly scheduled California wildfire/arson though, what with the entire planet going nuts below them. Damn, that’s a depressing thought.

We moved on through the day, only stopping to rest and drink water. 

“Where are we going to get enough water for the trip back?” Ivy asked, and I was actually fairly impressed that she thought that far ahead, so I answered them honestly. 

“There are natural springs all along these mountains. The California government tried to take control of them a few years back, but met armed resistance from the landowners. The US government promised sanctions on California and military assistance for the landowners if they didn’t at least pay for it, so the landowners and the state worked out a deal where the runoff would be collected in tanks at the bottom of the valleys. Everybody made out good on the deal, including my friend Mauze, who’d spent every last penny she had buying all the property up here back in our twenties. I told her it was a stupid idea at the time because this place is hard as hell to farm and she wanted to raise horses. Showed what I knew I guess huh? She made out really good in the deal, and shared it with me. We used that as startup money for a few enterprises I’d had my eye on and we made our fortunes. She bought better land over in Montana and we come up here in the spring to clean the place up and keep it livable so the local government doesn’t seize it. We ain’t gotta worry about water up here, dry as it may seem. We’ll just find one of the pipelines and tap it. I’m sure nobody is left to mind. Just hang onto a few bottles,” This satisfied them all and we continued on.

By noon we were all sweating pretty hard, especially me, wrapped in a leather jacket that stank like ladies perfume and another man’s ball sweat intermingled. At about three in the afternoon, I told them there’s another campsite up ahead, this one a premade with a nice firepit and logs to sit on and everything. We made our way up there and set our packs down on the logs and started picking up firewood. Kent gave Cornell the gun and told us to go find some bigger logs back down the trail. I nodded and led the way, Cornell keeping the gun trained on me.

We were about a half mile back down the trail and I had a load of logs set on a downed branch I was dragging as Cornell added to it. We were headed back when I dropped the end of the branch and walked over to the cliff to look down into the fire and smoke.

 

“The fuck do you think you’re doing you old bastard?” Cornell asked as I unzipped my fly and started pissing down the side of the mountain. 

“Just letting off some steam, pal,” I said as I arched the stream far out over the valley. I was finishing up, letting it drip between my feet as I heard him cock the pistol. I was starting to get real damn tired of hearing that. I stuffed myself back into my pants and zipped up again and raised my hand real slow. 

“So,” I asked casually, “Does Kent know you’re cuckolding him with Ivy?” 

“What the fuck did you just say?” 

“I said, does Kent know you’re fucking his woman? Is this one of those like, poly relationships or something and he’s the alpha cock? Or were you and Berkeley getting it on with her in that store hoping he couldn’t tell? Because he could and he seemed really pissed about it. You supposed to asked permission first? He is the leader of this little troop ain’t he?”

I knew what was coming but nothing really prepares you for getting shot in the back. Not all the training in the world. Not knowing you’re going to survive it. And not even the Kevlar panel you have sewn into the back of you leather biker jacket because you’re paranoid as hell and have too much money. It hurts like hell no matter what, really. I pitched over sideways and nearly opened my head on a boulder on the edge of the cliff and laid there for a second, stunned. He really fucking shot me, gold be damned.

I was laying face down now, my left arm had slid out of my jacket and I was kinda hugging the rock. Why the hell does this rock have a handle sticking out of it? I grabbed the handle and groaned as I tried to push myself up. Suddenly a pain in my bad side as Cornell kicked me, but it lifted me off my left arm enough to get it under me and I felt the adrenaline kick in. I felt every synapse in my body spring to life and time slowed a bit as the wires laced through my body lit up and tightened hard, throwing me up off the ground with whatever it was in my hand swinging wildly as I spun on Cornell screaming. I felt a meaty thump as the tool in my hand connected across his neck and an inch wide gash split through skin, muscle, tendon, and cartilage nearly to the back of his neck.

His eyes popped out of his skull as he let out a silent scream and a gurgling breath from his new neckhole as he spun around, the gun flying the other direction across the road. I snapped a kick out into his back and he pitched over the cliff like a puppet with his strings cut, smashing into rocks and bushes the whole way down until he careened one final time against a burning tree. The impact showered him with burning leaves and sticks which quickly caught his clothes and the carpet of detritus around him on fire.

I looked at the thing in my hand to find that it was a huge bloodstained meat cleaver with an extended point. It looked like one of those crazy huge anime swords, but the edge was on the wrong side and it was only about as long as my forearm and had a kitchen knife handle. I wiped it on my leg and stuffed it inside my coat with my left arm, which was aching again from the sudden violence, and leaned over to spit off the cliff.

Probably shouldn’t have pushed my luck because the cliff I’d been dancing on there gave out suddenly and I found myself clinging to the rock again, this time with my ass hanging over a burning forest and my left arm pinned inside my jacket. I primed myself for another burst to try to scramble up the cliff when I felt the rock shift and I held still. All I could do was yell curses over and over as I got ready to tumble down a mountain with a razor sharp knife stuck in my chest.

I was starting to laugh and lose it when I felt a hand grab me by the collar of my jacket, and I heard Kent yell at Ivy, “Pull! He’s slipping!” I really did start laughing as I was dragged up over the rock with my feet kicking against the gravel cliff. The rock came loose as I went over it and tumbled down the mountain, clacking and banging the entire way until it stopped far below.

I was laying on the ground panting and thanking Coyote above for smiling on my misfortune as the gun barrel was pushed into my mouth by a crazed bitch with hair that might once have been blue but was fading to silver. I could taste the dirt and gunpowder on the barrel as she pushed it into my throat, making me gag and retch.

“WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE!?” she screamed in my face. Oh boy. I wasn’t gonna survive this, I thought. Actually that’s not true, I what I actually thought was along the lines of “Lord Coyote don’t let me choke to death on my own vomit before she pulls the trigger,” but similar sentiments.

“YOU KILLED HIM!” she screamed in my face and yanked on the hammer. I went cross-eyed looking at her through the rear sites as she screamed at me and pulled the gun out of my mouth and slapped me with it. The teeth on that side definitely felt a little looser I thought as I gripped the side of my face with my hand and rolled to my side trying to get away. She brought the gun down on my back like a hammer. 

“You killed Cornell! You killed him!” she screamed over and over as she struck me again and again as I crawled away. Finally she let up and I turned on my knees to see that Kent had her in a bear-hug as she kicked and screamed and raged.

“He tried to kill me then fell off the fucking cliff shoving me over!” I yelled back. I pointed with my thumb at the bullet holes in my back as I climbed to my feet. “The fucker said he didn’t care if we never got the damn gold, that he thought I killed Berkeley and he shot me in the back and then when I fell off the cliff and grabbed the rock, he tried to kick it over the edge and missed and fell! It’s not my fault your friend was a dumbfuck,” I panted as I doubled over and wretched. My gag reflex was not that great and having road grit and gun grease in my mouth was making me want to vomit.

I looked at them then with all the hate I felt over the last week. Every goddamned bad thing in my life was embodied in those two shitheads in front of me. I could do it. One shot left in the gun and Kent has her arms pinned. 

Now’s my chance. 

I started to prime another charge but Kent suddenly let her go and yanked the gun out of her hands. He had it on me before I could pull my arm out so I held still and let the charge go. It felt like electric knives cutting through my muscles as I let it loose without moving but even with wired reflexes I can’t dodge a bullet at point blank range.

“Shoot him!” Ivy screamed at Kent over and over as he stared into my eyes. I stared back into the eyes of a man who’d just saved my life even though he knew deep down I’d killed his friends. Friends that he knew deep down, had betrayed him in the worst way and this one had nearly cost him everything. He decocked the pistol slowly and stuffed it into his waistband.

“He really shot you?” he asked levelly. I nodded. 

“Then he went over the cliff trying to finish me off,” I said.

“Why aren’t you dead from being shot in the back then?” Ivy asked sarcastically. 

I knocked on my chest where the knife was letting out a metallic thump. “Armor panels. Whole back is Kevlar. Paranoid. Paid off,” I panted. 

“Let’s go back to camp,” Kent said as he turned around. Ivy made another go at me, but Kent caught her around the waist and dragged her with him. I grabbed the branch full of logs and started dragging it back up the trail. I could not believe my luck. In the distance I heard a coyote start yipping and to me it sounded like it was laughing.

It got dark faster that night as storm clouds started to roll in, drawn by the rising heat of the fires and the spring winds off the ocean a hundred miles west. It got much cooler that night than the night before, so I built us a bonfire with the logs. Kent and Ivy sat on one side and I sat on the other.

The wind was blowing the smoke from the fires away from us that night thankfully, and we were in the lee of the ridge here in this camp. Had a nice rise going up about fifty feet with a few juniper trees between us the and other side. It was pitch dark without any starlight or moonlight, outside of the ring of light cast by our fire. We were all solemn as we stared into the flickering flames and waited for sleep to come.

“How much farther?” Kent asked when the fire had blazed down to about waist height. I’d have to bank it to keep it going until morning. “About another mile, and we’ll come to a spot where there’s nothing but stumps all along the ridge. I buried it there,”

Kent stared into the fire a while longer. Ivy looked dead-eyed into the coals as the wind played with the smoke and the trees swayed gently. Hopefully it wouldn’t rain before morning. Sleeping in the rain was not something I ever wanted to do. The night was still.

Suddenly a coyote howled from the top of the ridge and we all looked in the direction it came from. I smiled a wicked smile and turned to the other two.

“I need to know something before we part ways tomorrow,” I said and got an ugly look from Ivy that I returned with a waggle of my eyebrows and a lick of my teeth. She looked away and shivered and Kent pulled the gun. 

“Whatever the hell you want to ask can wait until morning,” he said as laid it across his lap.

“Oh I think not Kent. You see, I asked Cornell a question and he just shot me instead of answering,” I said as I eyed them. 

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Ivy snarked, 

“And satisfaction brought him back!” I shot back before turning to her boy toy. “Now Kent, answer this question and I’ll tell you right now where the gold is, down to the exact spot. You couldn’t miss it if you tried. I’ll tell you anything else you want to know. Then you can be done with me tonight and we can make with the happy ending. How about it?”

“And if I don’t? What if I just shoot you and take my chances looking for the stump? How many can there be?” he asked, his patience wearing thin and showing. 

“How many bullets do you have left?” I asked in return. 

“One,” he said, pointing the gun at me. “And I won’t shoot you in the back,” 

“You’ll have to deal with the coyotes with nothing but that toy knife your girlfriend has.” I said with a laugh in my voice. I slowly unzipped my jacket until my arm was laying my in lap, the handle of the knife there just out of sight.

“Don’t try anything stupid!” Kent said suddenly leveling the pistol right at my eye. 

“Way too late for that, now isn’t it?” I said laughing as I stood up, drawing the huge knife out of my coat as I approached the fire.

“Now tell me Kent, and tell me true! Did you know your girl been cheatin’ on you?” I sang as I raised my arms to my sides. He stood up in a rush and came to his edge of the fire, gun pointing at my now exposed chest, my sweat-stained black t-shirt hanging around my neck.

“Did you know that you were Cornell’s cuck?” I asked him slowly, my salacious grin flashing in the light from the fire. We were both so close to it now that the heat was palpable. Sweat beaded on both of our faces as we stared at each other. 

“He’s lying Kent! I’d never cheat on you! Never!” Ivy screamed from behind him as he looked me right in the eye. He’d saved my life for killing those that had betrayed him earlier, but calling his manhood into question was more than he could bare. No amount of progressive thought can change a man that deeply. That’s just how it is, on this bitch of an Earth. 

“I know,” he said barely above a whisper.

Ivy’s tirade caught in her throat as she miraculously heard him. 

“I know!” he shouted. “I knew all along! I was gonna kill them both when we got the gold,” he said like his veins were full of ice water as the sweat dripped down his chin and the gun pointed straight as an arrow at my eye over the fire.

“Tell me something else then, boy,” I said as the hate from his eyes outshone the fire between us. “Can you fight like a man? Or are you gonna be a cuck your whole damn life?” I dropped the knife to my side, my arms still outstretched. I was priming another charge to reach for the cards in my left sleeve and try to get one into him as soon as he dropped the gun. He whipped it around and threw it behind him as he roared, bracing to dive over the fire at me.

Instead his head disappeared in a cloud of pink mist that rose with the smoke from the fire and his body pitched forward into the flames. I held the charge laughing like a maniac as the report from an anti-material rifle washed over the scene like a crack of thunder, followed seconds later by a nearby lightning strike, and an actual peal of thunder. The rain started then and I laughed up into it with my charge still holding.

“You ruined everything!” Ivy screamed from my right side as she drew the hammer back on my gun again. Goddammit I really needed to stop getting taken by surprise by these assholes. “You killed them all! You ruined everything! Kent saved your fucking life and you killed him too!”

I looked at her down my right arm, stared straight over the metal barrel of my own .45/.410 revolver, looked at the cylinder and realized something that made me laugh even harder than before, and said to her with all the venom and hate I'd pushed back that week, “So fucking what?”

She pulled the trigger and nothing happened. She pulled it again and it clicked and nothing else. She pulled it and pulled it until she screamed and threw it at me. I dodged it and reached my right arm into my coat. 

“Something to remember next time you face a gambling man, little girl!” I yelled as I let the charge fire through my arms and time slowed to a crawl once again so I could take careful aim. “Always count the cards!” I said as I let the card I’d slipped out of its sleeve fly from my fingers. It zipped across the small distance between us in a blink and embedded corner first between her eyes. She stumbled back gaping with her arms out to balance, until her foot took one step back too far and she disappeared over the edge with an aborted scream and a crash.

I then turned back towards the other side of the camp and yelled, “Why the fuck didn’t you shoot her?” into the darkness on the other side of the fire. 

“Because your fat head was in between me and her you moron!” came a woman’s voice from out of the dark. Her Oklahoma drawl increasing in severity as she approached the fire. 

Before too long a figure covered head to toe in leaves, grass, and pine needles walked into the circle of light brandishing an immense rifle that was nearly as long as she was tall. She threw back the hood on the ghillie suit and looked stared me right in the eye. She was just over five feet tall with dark brown hair and big dark brown eyes.

“If you ever face a gambling man, don’t forget to count the cards?” she scoffed at me. 

I raised my hands and shrugged with a lopsided grin. “Hey, after the week I’ve had, I get a one-liner I think,” I replied. 

“You don’t even gamble! You won’t even play strip poker with me!” she said with mock outrage as she rounded the fire to stand in front of me.

“You know why I won’t do that,” I said levelly as we stood face to face. I’d missed her so much. So many emotions welled up inside me as I looked in her eyes, and I could tell there was something on her mind, but before either of us could speak, a cry for help sounded from the darkness over the cliff.

“Please! Somebody help me! I can’t hold on any longer! PLEASE!” it was Ivy. Somehow she had lucked out just enough to grab onto a root hanging from the wall of the cliff just a couple of feet down. 

“God, this is so cliché,” I said as I looked down at her.

“I’m sorry! Please! Please pull me up!” she kept on. I looked closer at her and lay all the way down on the ground. 

“Give me your hand!” I called to her. She looked at me with desperation in her eyes as she reached for me. I didn’t really make any effort to reach back for her, I just hung my hand over her head and grasped her hand when she took mine.

I pulled her up until I could reach her head with my other arm and plucked the novelty card out of her forehead, causing her to slap her hand over her face as blood poured from the wound. I let go of her other hand, and she fell free from the cliff and screamed as I picked myself up off the edge and wiped the blood from the card.

“Ace of Spades. Nice.” my friend said as I flourished it and tucked it back into the sleeve holster. Maybe they weren’t that useless. Still stupid though. 

“Would have been cooler if had been the Queen of Hearts, considering the whole ‘control the group of guys using sex and malice’ thing she had going on. Kent really thought he was in control,” I scoffed as we walked through the light rain back to the fire. I picked up my gun and dusted it off. The bluing had seen better days but it didn’t look damaged from being thrown around the last few days. Badly needed cleaning though. I stuffed it into my inside coat pocket, then bent and retrieved the cleaver, tucking it into my waistband.

I picked up a brightly burning branch from the fire, walked back to the cliff and tossed it over the side, watching it gutter and pop until it landed in a tree right below us, slowly setting the pine needles and smaller branches sheltered from the light rain alight. Ivy’s screams started again as her clothes caught as embers rained down on her from above.   
  
“There’s literally no way this can ever come back to bite us in the ass,” I said as my friend and I stood on the top of the cliff, flipping off the woman roasting alive below us. I turned to companion and asked the question I’d been meaning to ask for a week. “So, where the hell have you been? Did you fucking crawl here?”

That earned me a rifle butt in the gut and she grabbed me by my hair and pulled me to my knees so I was staring up at her. I sometimes forget how much of a bust she has unless I’m at this angle. She reached into her ghillie suit and pulled out a folded up piece of paper with familiar handwriting.

“You left me a NOTE, Coy! Saying, and I quote, ‘Went to Cali by the normal route. Be a good girl and listen to your folks. I’ll try to come back, but if I don’t, I love you. Signed, Coyote’ you fucking ASSHOLE!” she finishes this tirade by shoving the note quickly into my mouth as I opened it to defend myself, and shoved me over backwards to land on the wet gravel. I chewed it for a moment, noticing the scent, like fresh outdoor air, mixed with the salty taste of her skin, before spitting it out and climbing to my feet.

She was now on the far side of the camp from the cliff again, dragging a duffel bag out of a bush and unzipping it. She pulled out a pop up tent, some stakes, a hatchet, and a roll of nylon line. “Come on idiot, that storm is bigger than you think. I’ve been up here waiting on you for a couple days, and I looked at it earlier from the other side of the ridge. It’s bringing lots of wind rain and maybe hail. Help me get this tent set up,” she said without looking at me.

“Uh hey, what about Kent?” I asked, gesturing to the headless and now mostly cooked corpse on the fire. “I don’t want to smell his dirty ass in the morning,” I said. She dropped the stakes and line and came over to help me pull him off the fire. We each grabbed a leg and dragged his flaming body to the edge of the road, and I used a stick to shove him off.

“Rest in piss,” I said as the woman beside me said “Rip in pieces,” as we watched him tumble into the smoke below. The rain started to pick up so we made short work of setting up and securing the tent.

Once it was set, she tossed the rifle and duffle bag into one side, then stripped out of her ghillie suit, then pulled her black tank top off and unbuckled her pants and started kicking her boots off. “Get your clothes off,” she said pushing her pants down as I turned away. 

“What the hell?! Why?” I asked as I started to comply, dropping the leather jacket and peeling my shirt off as well. 

“It’s gonna be colder than a witch’s tit out here tonight with the storm, and we’ll need to share body heat. We’re sharing a sleeping bag too,” she explained. I wasn’t really comfortable with this but I was too damn tired to argue at this point and just glad to have someone around I could trust that much. She tossed her clothes into the tent then added mine to make a soft spot on the ground. She crawled in and pulled out a large downy bag from the duffle as I bent to follow her in.

“Nice panties by the way,” I observed as I followed her lead. They were, too. Black and orange tiger stripes. She also had on a sports bra, thankfully, and a pair of striped black and white thigh high socks that she doffed and tossed into the bag,

“I know, right?” She replied. 

“I hope you brought me a change of clothes for in the morning,” I said. “Nope,” she answered. “You’re just gonna have to wash what you have until we get back to your truck,”

I turned to zip the tent closed and a flashlight clicked on behind me, then I felt her small fingers touch my back, making me flinch as her fingers traced the three huge bruises the buckshot from my last bullet had left in my back. Kevlar is great stuff but it doesn’t keep the impact from tearing your ass apart. 

“Lucky thing I’m paranoid huh?” I cracked as she pulled away. She didn’t reply, next running her hand over my left arm, the bruised shoulder, bicep, and forearm along with the scabbed up skin all being thoroughly inspected in silence.

“Another pint or two of tequila and I’ll be right as rain,” I quipped, the only answer was another peel of thunder and a gust of wind splattering the rain against the thin nylon walls around us.

“You’re an idiot,” she said and clicked off the light. We crawled into the bag and got comfortable with her back to my chest and her head under my chin. She’d balled up the ghillie suit to act as a pillow for us and I wrapped my arm around her and held her close. It was the first comfort I’d had in weeks. Soon we drifted off to the sound of the storm raging around the tent.

I awoke later that night in the pitch darkness because I heard a sound and felt something shaking against me. I held perfectly still at first, my senses ramped all the way up, fearing another attack. Soon I realized what I felt and heard was the tiny girl in my arms sniffling and shivering from holding in her sobs. She’d rolled over and was facing me in the bag with her arms wrapped under mine and her head buried in my chest. I kissed the top of her head and wrapped my arms around her tighter.

“I thought I lost you when he shot you. I froze up. I thought you were dead. I saw you fall down and I thought you’d died. I was going to kill them all so slowly they’d beg the devil to take them to hell for killing you,” she sobbed into my chest as I shushed her. I patted her back and rubbed it gently to try to reassure her I was still there.

“Then! Your stupid ass! Nearly! Fell! Off! A! Cliff!” she punctuated this with kicks to my shins as I started chuckling. 

“I’m alright though. My luck hasn’t given out yet.” I said and kissed the top of her head again.

“You fucking moron. You better never leave me behind again,” She said as she calmed down. 

“The road ahead is gonna be long though. And there’s gonna be lots of danger now that things are different,” I told her. 

“Yeah, well. Somebody has to keep you from getting killed, or throwing yourself into every damned dangerous situation you can find. I swear, it’s like you go looking for trouble,” she said and I laughed again. 

“Thank you for saving me, Tazz,” I said into her hair, glad she couldn’t see the tears leaking from my own eyes. 

“You’re welcome Coy,” she said back.

We soon drifted off again in each others’ arms. The storm outside blew itself out by morning and the storms within the tent had washed away a week of pain and fear. The morning came bright and clear if a little cool, and the valley below was full of mist as we crawled out of the tent and got dressed in our semi-damp clothes. We decided against cooking breakfast on the firepit and instead packed up quickly and walked back down the trail as I regaled her with the tale of how I’d survived my run-in with the hippies, as she called me an idiot at every opportunity for getting myself into that mess and pointed out that it wouldn’t have happened if I’d just waited for her.

I mean, she wasn’t wrong, but I was in a hurry. I still needed to find Mauze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TOld you this was gonna be bloody. If you didn't believe me that there was gonna be some nasty deaths, well you better. I'm gonna keep up with the graphic deaths and they'll get worse. My self insert here isn't a Paladin.


	5. Best Laid Pland of Mauze and Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mystery presents itself, clues are found, breakfast is had.

“Ok so you counted five shots, and knew you loaded six in the gun. Where’d the other shot go?” Tazzy asked me as we rounded the bend near the bottom of the trail.

“I didn’t even think about it until she had the gun in my face and I realized she hadn’t shot me in the mouth earlier. They ran out but didn’t want me to know. They held up a gas station while I was out cold, before they shot the cop. Kent told me that himself in the van. I didn’t think about it at the time but of course he was the kind of psychopath that would kill the clerk just for being there,” I explained.

“A real alpha cuck. No restraint and has to prove his dominance through violence,” she nodded sagely as we ambled along. I looked down the trail away from her for a second then did a double take.

Mauze’s trailer was still standing. The yard was even still green. The trees were scorched but fine, and everything around it for miles was burned to a crisp, but the house and everything inside the garden was untouched as if a raging forest fire hadn’t swept the area yesterday. In addition, a California Highway Patrol cruiser sat in the driveway in front of the front steps.

“What in the hell?!” I shouted as I looked around. 

“What?” Tazz asked me, obviously confused. “I burned this place to the ground yesterday!” I shouted, equally as confused. 

“No you didn’t. When I got here, the sprinklers were all on and in a ring around the garden, and one was on the roof. The generator was going and the pump for the well was plugging along nicely. I thought you did it.” She explained as I gaped at the freshly watered lawn.

“I wouldn’t have had them scrambling up the mountain like I did if  the place wasn’t about to burn down. They wouldn’t have left the safety of the sprinklers. But they weren’t going when we were here and the generator wasn’t running when we left,” I walked up to the house, skirting the CHP car and inspecting the front door, which was now closed and locked. I procured the spare key I left  in a cactus pot beside the door and let us in.

“Wait a minute,” I said as Tazzy dropped the duffle and collapsed into a luxury recliner beside the fireplace. “The door wasn’t locked yesterday. Kent just kicked it open without any trouble like it wasn’t latched. His spindly city boy ass would never have been able to knock this thing in,” I looked around for more clues. “What is that cop car doing here?” I asked.

“I drove it here,” Tazzy answered as she kicked her feet up. “I think you need to explain what you’ve been up to since all this went down,” I said. 

“Not until you feed me and I take a nice hot shower,” she said. Figures. I opened the fireplace and tossed a handful of tinder into it, lit it with the box of matches on the shelf nearby, then added sticks, and eventually logs once I had a good blaze going. This was necessary because the hot water pipes ran through the back of the fireplace and the coils there would heat the pipes and in turn the water. A good steady fire would get you a steaming hot bath in no-time and there wasn’t really a limit on hot water for showers, as long as you kept the fire stoked.

Tazz stripped as she walked towards the bathroom, this time not stopping at her underwear as she dropped everything in the floor beside the bathroom door. I stripped out of my clothes too, gathered hers and went to the laundry room with the entire pile. It was nice to be doing simple domestic tasks, I thought. Makes you forget the world ended. I loaded the washer and set the timer then went to the kitchen to see what I could cook up.

The mystery was added to at this point, as the pantry was mostly full, and the freezer had meat in it. I got out a package of bacon, a couple of potatoes from the pantry, a few eggs from the battery powered fridge, and much to my surprise there was a bottle of milk that looked very fresh. I thought I knew what had happened at that point and knew what I’d find eventually, but busied myself cleaning my face and arms and starting our meal. 

Along the way I started the coffee maker and found the sugar and a couple of cups.   
Soon I had a fine breakfast of eggs, bacon, fried potato cakes, a cup of coffee for me, and a bottle of milk for Tazz because I knew she’d gulp the entire thing down anyways. I made sure I got some in a small cup for my coffee first though.

After what seemed like forever, she came out of the bathroom wrapped in towels, took one look at me, and walked back into the bathroom. She came back out with another towel and threw it at me and I remembered it was rude to eat naked.

We sat down to eat our late breakfast and once she’d had her fill, I went to the laundry and changed the clothes over to the dryer then checked the level on the generator. It had half a tank of gas left according to the fuel gauge. It should have ran through that if it was set to run before Tazz got to the mountain. That means someone either refilled it, or shut if off and then turned it back on yesterday. My bet was the first one.

As predicted, Tazz was gulping the milk and had poured herself a coffee as well. She’d dug deeper into the pantry and found Mauze’s caramel and chocolate syrup bottles, and had mixed them into her cup. I stuck with milk and sugar for mine. Once she’d emptied the bottle and gave a contented sigh, I looked at her and prompted, “Well?”

“Well what?” she asked. The food and hot water had obviously lulled her into a stupor. 

“Well, why is there a CHP car out front, why weren’t you at your house two weeks ago, and how the hell did you find me?” I asked.

“Oh, that. Long stupid story. Have you figured out what’s going on with this place yet?” she stalled. I had in fact and told her as much. 

I then got up and went into Mauze’s bedroom, but didn’t find what I was looking for there. I then went out the front door and over to a small shack on the edge of the garden, that instead of being full of tools, held a small work space with a hammock. Pinned to the hammock was a note and all I could do was shake my head as I read it.

I brought it back into the house and handed it to Tazz, who read it and laughed in my face. “Hahahahaha! That’s what you get!” she brayed at me as I scowled at her. I guess it was fair. It’s true what they say about having the tables turned on you. It never really feels all that good.

Went to Montana by the normal route. Be a good boy and listen to Tazz. Sorry I couldn’t stay and play with you and your friends, I’m sure you can handle them. Signed, Mauze

“So, she made sure the house wouldn’t burn down, set up enough fuel to keep the generator going for 3 days, then snuck off the mountain after I’d come up?” Tazz asked incredulous. Honestly I was little upset myself. I was here on time. I’d made it! She’d left me with those assholes!

“Please just tell me how you got here, Tazz, while I process this,” I begged as I sank into one of the recliners. Tazzy sat across from me and collected her thoughts. 

“Well, it all began with the disaster announcement, and the Mayor ordering the fallout shelter opened.” She began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a nice change of pace. I'd like to thank ShatteredRhapsody and BlackxFirexTazz for their help betaing and editing these chapters going forward.


	6. Tazz' Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What was Tazz up to while I was being a dumbass out in the desert? A lot apparently.

“Tazz! Come on get up, we have to go!’ her father said hurriedly as he popped his head in her door to wake her. She bolted upright in bed, not used to people just coming into her room. 

“What’s the matter?” She asked blearily as she climbed out of bed and slipped her feet into house slippers.

The house was full of commotion as everyone ran back and forth looking for things here and there. Soon, Tazzy heard the distant wail of the tornado sirens. A quick check of her phone told her it was not Wednesday and it definitely wasn’t noon. The sun wasn’t even up. She tried to ask her stepsister as she ran past but the younger girl ignored her. Finally, she grabbed her dad and asked him again what was wrong.

“The Mayor ordered everyone into the fallout shelter. They’re pretty sure the Koreans are attacking,” he said with an edge to his voice. 

‘About time,’ Tazzy thought sleepily and laughed to herself. The look on her dad's face snapped her wide awake and she shot back to her room to get dressed and grab her things. She had just packed her laptop into her knapsack and gotten her boots on when her father started honking the horn. She grabbed her things and ran out to the waiting truck with her sisters. Her stepmom did a headcount, and Tazzy remembered something pretty vital. This was when she discovered that the cell lines were all down.

“Dad, I can’t reach anyone on my phone! I can’t call T. or Coyote to let them know to get somewhere safe!” she said, her voice raising in pitch as the truck backed out of the driveway and tuned onto the road.

“I know, darlin,” He said without looking back. “The internet, the phone lines, nearly everything is gone. That’s why they think it’s the Koreans. The Mayor thinks they set off a EMP device to knock out communications before they invade.”

“It would be stupid as hell for Korea to invade America though! The military doesn’t use the same network as us and they can still blow up anyone stupid enough to try to invade.” Tazzy scoffed. 

“I don’t think they care,” her father said as they sped through the gathering morning light towards the hills outside of town.

When they arrived there were already cars lined up along the road. People were just parking on the shoulder, gathering their things, and lining up to enter the shelter. It had been meant for about two hundred people back in the 1950s, but the town had shrunk to less than that after 1970 and never really recovered. They lined up with their bags and their bedding with everyone else and solemnly waited to be let in. With only about a hundred and sixty people, it didn't take long but the smell of fear was thick in the air.

Tazzy worried about her twin sister away at college, her mother off god knows where, her ex-stepfather though he had his own shelter, and last about her friend Coyote. He’d be looking for her, and if he was caught outside in an attack, she didn’t want to think about what might happen.

Once they were inside, they were assigned alcoves. Her dad and stepmom got one, her stepsisters got another, and much to her surprise, she got one all to herself. The guy just shrugged and said they had enough for some people to get some to themselves and still have empties.

She didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and quickly set up her laptop at the desk, and connected it to a phone line. No cable or DSL here, but the phone lines would do as long as they stood. She used the special browser Coyote had her install a year ago that would let her connect for free, using a protocol he’d bought at great personal expense from one of the older telecoms.

“I used to use this protocol to sign into the internet for free back when I was a kid,” he’d said. 

She still thought a million dollars was a lot for nostalgia's sake, but she was grateful for it now. He wasn’t online though. He must be out in his truck. With the towers down, he’d be disconnected. She signed into an IRC he frequented and watched them chatter and panic as the sysadmin switched them all over to his personal server and the Coyotecom network. 

“Paranoid fuck finally did something right,” One of them said, garnering a round of lols and gratitude. 

“Have you guys seen him?” she asked the mainchat, but nobody had since the night before. He just suddenly logged out at midnight. Dammit.

She spent some time searching around the internet for what was going on, but even though the 56k dial-up was sparsely populated in America, only about a couple hundred people using it, it was still nerve-wracking when you’re used to high-speed connections like the Nationwide Wi-fi that had been set up a couple years ago run by the government as a utility, or the even faster networks by the telecoms. It was better than nothing though.

The chat was full of the same complaints, but they quickly settled into different rooms to game the time away as they waited for news. A few of the more patient individuals were relaying what the world was saying to the chat however, and the news was surprising.

Everyone had heard of and seen videos of the crazed people attacking in large groups. These “zombies” had come out of nowhere and of course didn’t look dead, but there were lots of them. This had been going on for a week or two, with the attacks occurring more and more frequently, and the numbers of zeds rising every day. The CDC had been tracking the attacks to see what the vector was but it seemed to be completely random, aside from happening the most often in heavily populated cities, like a any viral outbreak would.

The authorities were checking every vector they could think of. Water, food, drugs, blood-borne diseases, plants, fungus, insects, radiation, etc. Nothing seemed to be the carrier for this outbreak. Everyone had a theory on what was causing it. The most frightening of all was that a scientist on the International Space Colony, what had once been just a science outpost in space before expanding to a habitat with almost a thousand people over the last decade, had reported that several people had somehow gotten it on there, and they’d had to jettison whole hab cells to keep it from spreading. 

Luckily, the zeds didn’t know how to work the keypads on the inner ring security so nothing vital had been destroyed, but several whole families had died to one of their number suddenly going berserk in the middle of a sleep cycle, at different points along the outer ring. They’d caught one alive in an airlock and were studying it, but it was difficult with how unpredictable they are.   


We knew a few things about the zombies though. They died like normal people, could be controlled with teargas somewhat, and did have to rest and eat. The problem seemed to be that they didn’t care what they ate as long as it was living flesh and would attack other humans, pets, and any animals they could catch. They’d turn on each other in crowds, and for that reason they were mostly solitary, unless in pursuit of something besides each other.

They couldn’t control any complicated machinery, but several had been in moving vehicles on the road when it started, crashing their cars into others to cause as much mayhem as possible before scrabbling out to kill and eat the other people in the wrecks. It was basically pandemonium for a week before people just stopped going outside without guns.

The zeds used only crude weapons themselves. Basically whatever they could pick up and swing, like rocks, sticks, tools, pipes, other people’s limbs, etc. The entire concept of defense seemed to be completely out the window and they never retreated, running straight into killzones chasing whatever bait people used. They’d be easy to deal with, if they didn’t outnumber everyone else.

The weirdest news however, was that it only happened to Americans. There’d been isolated cases outside of America, but those had been American tourists. People all over the world were scared to death of any Americans in their countries, and they’d all been rounded up and put into quarantine until the cause could be determined. The non-American image boards had a field day with that news.

Today, however, the new threat was that the population was so busy dealing with screaming maniacs killing each other and everyone else, that the power had gone out in large sections of the continent. Nobody was drilling for oil, nobody was minding the power plants, nobody was doing anything except trying to survive. The American population of four hundred million suddenly had to deal with over a hundred million of them turning on the rest and the police and military were overwhelmed. They couldn’t protect us from such large numbers, especially when a large part of them had also turned.

The smaller towns had dealt with it by using their armored police vehicles they’d gotten from a military rollback in the past, to draw out and kill the zombies by driving around slowly with their sirens on and then shooting whatever ran towards them. The larger cities had tried the same, but the results weren’t pretty. They’d killed a fair few, but they were quickly buried in bodies and the men and women inside suffocated as the crush of thousands of zeds choked the engines air intakes and then their own air.

Cities with large military presences, those built up around bases, or nearby, had fared the best. After a few accidents, they had waited to roll out their heavy armor until the zeds stopped appearing, then sent tanks out to clear out the zombies. They’d then used heavy loaders to wall off sections of the cities, and waited. It wasn’t long until the main power and water had gone out. Places without natural spring water had little chance of survival in the next three weeks.   


The military itself was stretched thin as it was, before you accounted for the losses to the outbreak. Of the 2.3 million service members, about a quarter had turned. The Navy and Airforce were hit the hardest, the Army barely having any, and none of them combat troops for some reason, whereas the Marines saw none at all.   
  
After the outbreaks stopped the Navy sent out carriers to patrol the waters, but without support from the infrastructure nobody knew how long they’d last. Many speculated they were only out there to give the VIPs a place to run to if it got bad. The President had refused to leave the white house, even when several staffers had turned and been put down by the Secret Service, though.

Hospitals were over their limits wherever they were still standing. Luckily a few recent advances, like handheld light that regrew skin, stem-cell treatments to regrow smaller parts and organs, 3D printing organs, and ready-made prosthetics made the load lighter, but they’d only last so long with the power out. The back-up generators and diamond-fission batteries in the hospitals weren’t meant to carry such loads for so long, let alone support the small communities popping up around them.

Things had gone from bad to worse in very little time, and it didn’t look like it was getting any better. Any city with a port was begging for help evacuating, while the UN instituted travel bans into and out of the USA. Canada and Mexico had both closed their borders, and anyone caught crossing was quarantined in the former, and shot in the latter. Mercenary units were being hired by some cities to fill in the gaps where police and military couldn’t be. America as we knew it was gone, as martial law descended upon us.

Worst of all were the people taking advantage of the chaos to loot, plunder, rape, and assault. Roving gangs of bandits had taken over large sections of some of the cities, and there were reports of them attacking travelers on the highways as well. The airlines had shut down completely when the outbreaks happened due to several planes going down at once. Trains could still run, but ran the risk of being targeted by the bandits as well. There were less bandits, but they had firepower.

Militias had sprung up to cover small areas here and there as well, with mixed results. Low training and too much booze lead to a few incidents and there had been armed incursions into Canada by some that had lead to a larger military presence along the northern border.

Tazz sat back from her laptop, watching the links and chatter scroll past as she took all this in. It had gotten much worse than she’d thought. The media had said it was just a few armed people causing trouble and nothing for the majority of the nation to worry about. Somewhere out there, her sister and her friends were stuck in the thick of it. It was hard not to be alarmed.

She closed her laptop and went to sit with her family for a while. She found all of them in her dad and stepmom’s alcove, and her dad hugged her as she sat next to him on his bunk. The bunker had unlimited power, each of the alcoves had its own diamond-fission batteries for lights and small electronics, lot of good your cell phone would do you in this mess though. At least they had music until their stuff wore out. The shelter had a full library of books and movies in a central server and a local wireless LAN they could connect to. Everybody over the age of 3 had a phone or tablet nowadays so everybody was content and docile, though she could hear crying from some of the other alcoves.

At dinner time, the Mayor called everyone into the cafeteria/lounge area for an announcement. Many of the faces were worn from worry and many eyes were red from crying. She saw a few of the people she knew from town, but never realized before how few people in her own town she knew.

“Is this everybody?” The Mayor began. He waited for the affirmatives to stop then began again. “Alright then. As you all know, this morning the national power grid went dark. The entire nation is without power and the cell phone and internet towers are down. Fearing a widespread attack, our President declared a state of emergency and told everyone who could get into a shelter to do so. As Mayor of our town, I had the sirens turned on and mobilized our police force to evacuate everyone into this shelter. It has enough food and water stored for two hundred people to live for a month if necessary, and thanks to a generous donation by an anonymous benefactor, we have power pretty much forever, along with a desalination machine. Yes, I know what that means and I hope it doesn’t come to that too but they use them on the space colony and you don’t hear them complaining about the taste.” Nervous laughter spread throughout the small crowd at this, and he waited until it was quiet to begin speaking again.   


“This here shelter is home for all of us for the foreseeable future. That means we have to get along like family until the emergency situation outside is over. We have the radio up and running and we’re monitoring the government and emergency channels, as well as coordinating with other shelters and towns to see what can and must be done. This whole thing is pretty new to all of us, but we’re going to do the best we can to make this as easy as possible.” He looked around the crowd for a moment, making eye contact with people, before asking, “Are there any questions?”   
  
Immediately hands shot into the air. He picked a man near the front. Tazz couldn’t see his face but he was tall and wearing a blue work shirt. “How long are we gonna be down here?” the man asked.

“A month at the least,” The Mayor responded.    
The man quickly asked another question before The Mayor could move on, “What if we don’t want to stay?”   
  
The Mayor looked at him for a moment and said, “Well, I can’t really stop you from leaving. The door locks from the inside and it’s just made to keep chemical, biological, and radiological hazards out. But you can’t come and go as you please. Once you’re out, you’re out. You’ll have to make your own way. The power to the town is gone and the water isn’t running. This shelter isn’t connected to the grid and is the only comfort you’ll find unless you have other plans. Now, are there any other questions?”

The question and answer session continued for another half hour then they all sat down to eat. Tazz noticed that the man who’d asked wasn’t there anymore and there were less people than before. “Do you really think he left?” she asked her dad.

“Some people are just damn idiots. He’ll get himself killed out there,” he said as they ate. The food wasn’t great but it was nourishing. After dinner they all returned to their alcoves and Tazz hugged her family goodnight before going into her alcove. She sat up online even after the main lights had went off, talking with the few people she could and reading more about the outside world. By midnight she’d already decided she was going to leave.

She didn’t know it then, but I’d already been to her house that day, and finding it abandoned, had    
written her a note and set off for California.    


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exposition galore! Mysteries abound in this brave new world, and people are just kiinda reacting at this point.


	7. Bugging Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tazz sets forth on her adventure, with a pitstop at her family home before things get rolling.

They awoke the next day, and found there really wasn’t much to do. A shelter doesn’t really need much in the way of maintaining once it’s going and there weren’t any jobs to do so everyone just sat around playing games, watching movies in the common areas, talking, eating, sleeping, and reading. The showers and toilets were in stalls and like the alcoves, had curtains so there was some privacy. Tazz met with her family in the cafeteria for breakfast, and was informed that milk was not on the menu, which cemented her decision from last night.

“I’m leaving,” she said when her father told her about the milk. 

“No, you’re not,” her dad said. 

“I have to go dad. Terra is out there and so are my friends. I need to make sure they’re ok!” Tazz exclaimed, which got a hard look from her dad. 

“Terra is fine. The college has a shelter and I talked to her the other night. She’s safe. Your friends can look after themselves. It’s my job to look after you.” he said to her and went back to eating. 

She knew he wouldn’t change his mind.

The rest of the day was spent in awkward silence whenever she was around her family, but her father did hug her when she asked, so she knew it wasn’t that bad. She spent most of her time pouring over all the information she could find, looking for any clues as to where Coyote could be, but he had not appeared online at all since the other night.

She waited until an hour after the lights went out that night, then packed her things. As quietly as she could, she crept into her parents alcove and kissed her sleeping dad on the cheek. She left a note on his desk, took his keys, then went to the door of the shelter, where one of the town policemen was standing guard.

“You think you’re leaving, kid?” he challenged her. In reply, she wordlessly produced her driver’s license, showing that she was in fact an adult. “It might be dangerous out there. Think of your family,” he said this time, not quite pleading with her to reconsider.

“They’re safe here. I have other family to check on,” she stated, holding her emotions back before they could betray her. The man looked her in the eyes for a moment, then sighed and stepped aside. He pushed the button and the seals on the airlock door opened, and she carried her things into it. 

“Good luck, and may God have mercy on you,” he said as he handed her a slip of paper, then closed the door behind her. She didn’t believe in god, but she thanked him anyways. She looked at the slip of paper to find it was the contact codes and frequency for the bunker. At least she’d be able to get messages to her family if she could find a relay station.

She turned as the seals on the outside door released with a hiss and a pop. Without delay she walked out into the cool nighttime air of spring, and breathed fresh air for the first time in over twenty four hours. Her stint in a fallout shelter hadn’t lasted nearly as long as the games advertised.

She walked quickly across the small parking lot and up the road until she found her dad’s old truck. She opened it and threw her things into the seat. She climbed in after them and started the truck and just sat for a few moments. Should she go back? Terra was supposedly safe and Coyote had Mauze looking after him. She could stop and go back and pretend this never happened and spend the next month in a hole in the ground with her family and the whole town.

The she remembered that they didn’t have any milk. She spun the wheel around and turned the truck back towards town. To hell with that.

The drive back into town only took a half hour in the dark, and it was closing in on midnight when she pulled into her driveway. She left her things in the truck as she unlocked the front door, went into the kitchen and tried to turn on the light. Oh, the power was out. Damb.

She felt her way to the kitchen counter and found the candles in a drawer, and lit one with her Zippo. She carried it into her room, where she searched around and found her flashlight. Using the much better light of the little LED bulb, she gathered a few things she figured she’d need for the road. A few knives, some canned food, some more clothes, and finally into her parents room for something she knew she would definitely need.

Laying on the bedside table was her dad’s gun. It was a custom Magnum Research revolver that was chambered in 5.56x45 and had a wasp engraved on the black and yellow handgrip, with the word “YELLOWJACKET” down the spine of the grip. She pulled open the drawer below it, found the gunbelt, speedloaders, and two boxes of ammunition for it. Her dad had taken her out shooting with it and showed her how to use it. She could bullseye a target from twenty-five feet one handed with it. She gathered it all and took it back to her room.

As her light played across her bed she saw something she hadn’t noticed before.. A piece of paper was lying on her pillow, and on it, in Coyote’s handwriting was a note that said: 

_ “Went to Cali by the normal route. Be a good girl and listen to your folks. I’ll try to come back, but if I don’t, I love you. Signed, Coyote” _

She crumpled the note and yelled curses at the top of her lungs and stomped through the house cursing his name, his timing, his complete lack of common sense, and everything else about him. She then went back into her room again to continue getting everything ready. She’d decided to leave first thing in the morning, and wanted an early start, but first she needed to sleep.

She set out her clothing and curled up in her bed, alone in the dark. Only the emotional exhaustion of the day seemed enough to pull her under, as her nerves jangled from her first real adventure.

In the morning, she washed her face and hands in the sink with a bottle of water from the kitchen, ate a cold breakfast from the pantry, and used a familiar bathroom for the last time in a long time. When all was said and done, she went back to her bedroom, ready to end one chapter, and begin another.

There she changed clothes, putting on a sports bra, black tanktop and jeans, and a pair of sturdy boots, and her favorite black and orange cowboy hat that had a silver emblem of her own design on the front. “That jerk better not be dead or I’ll kill him,” she said to herself out loud as she touched the Jolly Roger on the crown.

She put a long coat on and dumped the ammunition and speedloaders into the pockets, then twisted the key for her dad’s motorcycle off the chain, and put it on her own. She then went out to the garage, opened the door, and pulled the truck in. She pulled a few of her things out of her bags in the truck and put them in her duffle bag and tied it to her father’s bike, before walking it out into the driveway. She went back in, hung up the keys, and closed the garage.

After walking around the house once more, taking in the memories, she walked out the front door, locked it, made sure the spare key was in place, and approached the bike she was commandeering for the trip.

It was her dad’s Harley Davidson cruiser. It had originally been a gas powered, but he’d gotten an expensive electric upgrade, with diamond-fission batteries. It could drive pretty much non-stop until the tires fell off, and could reach highway speeds of up to ninety miles per hour. It was what he normally rode to work to save on gas. The downside is that the two storage bins on the side were taken up by batteries so you had to carry everything with you. No problem for her though, she travelled light.

She inserted the key into the ignition lock and with a twist it gave a low hum, then the speaker on the undercarriage kicked in. A nice little feature to let people know you were on the road. Beat the high pitched electric whine of the actual motor. She rolled out to the end of the driveway and stopped. She pulled the crumpled note out of her pocket, looked at it again, then straightened it, folded it and stuffed it into her shirt.

“The normal route,” she snarked as she pulled her helmet on and let her hat fall to her back by its string. “I’m gonna make him eat this note,” she said as she twisted the throttle and the bike glided forward. Wasn’t as satisfying as a big V-twin, but she had a long way to go and it would get her there faster.

Soon she was flying down the highway, heading north towards her sister’s college. She needed to check on her first, before anything else. If anything happened to her sister, she’d never forgive herself. Coyote was a big boy, he could watch over himself for a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I checked, Harley does make electric bikes. They're crap for distance right now, but with the radio-diamond batteries this one group of guys is working on right now, they'd have unlimited range.


	8. College Bound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tazz has her first real encounter with the dangers of this brave new world.

Tazz had never felt so free before. It was exhilarating but also a little frightening. She’d always felt kind of alone, and she’d driven by herself before, but things were very different now, and the almost complete lack of traffic as she flew along the roads wasn’t the evidence of that. Every town she passed was marked by trails of smoke in the sky now. Whether from wildfires or people burning the dead, or just using wood to stay warm, she didn’t know. She didn’t have time to investigate either.

After a few hours of riding, she rolled into a roadside rest stop to stretch her legs. The place was mostly deserted except for a minivan on the far end by some picnic tables. Tazz pulled out her phone to check the time, checked the map on it as well, then pulled a bottle of water from her knapsack and washed the road grit from her mouth.

She was pulling off her helmet and putting her cowboy hat on when the minivan caught her eye and she realized she could see a head in one of the windows. 

Normally she’d be too shy to approach other people, but something felt really off.    
It was a maroon minivan, an electric economy class of some make or another. They really all looked alike. It was a five door model, with sliding doors on both sides and a raising gate in the back along with the driver and passenger doors. The passenger side is where she saw the head of the person she’d noticed from the other side of the parking lot.

The wrongness of the scene grew on her as she got closer. They hadn’t moved since she had noticed them, and as she got closer the angry buzzing of flies grew louder and louder until she couldn’t approach any closer due to the smell of rotting meat and offal.

She stepped back, gagging and retching as she realized what she was looking at. A dead family. A whole family had been killed when they stopped by the side of the road. She stumbled back with her hand over her mouth and nose to block the smell.   
Her senses keyed up as she realized that there was probably still danger in the area. Whatever got them might still be around, though now it looked like they’d been there a couple of days.

She noticed that the drivers side sliding passenger door was open, and saw a trail of blood leading off from it to the tall grass around the small parking lot. It looked like something had been dragged off. Wolves maybe? Coyotes were pretty likely too, but she’d never heard of a coyote attacking a car full of people. They were too cowardly for that.

Tazz heard the rustle of the grass, the pounding of feet, and the scream of primal rage all at once it seemed. She spun just in time to see a small girl, no more than fourteen running at her at a full sprint, teeth bared and dead eyes wide and bloodshot, clothes caked in dirt and blood.

She barely managed to dodge the girl as she made for a tackle. Tazz reflexively kicked the girl as she skidded to the ground, sending her sprawling on her belly. The crazed youth rolled and scrabbled to her feet and lunged again.   
  
“What the fuck is wrong with you!?” Tazz screamed at the girl as she hopped out of her way again. In answer, the girl screamed again and swung her arms wildly at Tazz’ face.

“Stop!” Tazz yelled at the girl, but words had no effect. Finally Tazz had had enough and pulled the gun from its holster and fired a shot into the girl’s middle. She folded like a wet cardboard box and fell to the ground.

Tazz nearly dropped the gun. She’d trained yes, done the mannequin runs, and urban combat drills for fun with Coy but shooting a real person and seeing them go down was very different. Her blood was pounding in her ears as she approached the girl. Her breathing slowed as she toed the girl in the back and got no response.

She holstered the gun, and almost bent to check for a pulse, when her mind finally caught up to what her gut had been telling her since she saw the bodies in the van.   
It was one of them. The danger was her. She needed to get the fuck away from that thing as fast as she could. There could be others.

She pulled her hand away and turned on her heel. She holstered the big revolver and jogged back to the bike. She was pushing her hat back to hang around her neck, when she heard the sound of a pebble grinding into asphalt a few feet behind her.   
She spun around, and the adrenaline seemed to slow time as it raced through her veins.

The girl had snuck up behind her this time and Tazz didn’t let thinking get in the way of her training this time. Her hands moved on their own, right hand slapping leather and pulling the handle of the revolver in one smooth motion. She locked eyes with the zombie girl, then lined the sights of the gun up with her face. Her left hand came up over her right and she fanned the hammer.

The girl’s body jerked and fell back as all five shots left in the cylinder found their mark in her face and chest. The intermediate rifle rounds tore through her skull and small body like wet tissue as they passed through her. She was dead when the first one went through her braincase, the rest just sealed the deal.

Tazz panted as she stood there staring at the little girl she’d just killed for what felt like the second time. She hit the cylinder release and raised the gun, letting the brass slide out and fall to the ground with hollow clinks.

That’s how she felt. Hollow as a spent cartridge. She pulled a speed loader out of her pocket, and slipped six fresh rounds into the cylinder with a twist before dropping the empty device into her pocket and pushing the swingarm back into the frame, closing the breach. Numbly, she stooped and plucked up the casings. Policing her brass had been part of her training too and right now she needed the old habits to do the work of moving for her.

She turned back around again, climbing onto the motorcycle one handed, gun at the ready, until she was sure the girl wasn’t going to get up one last time. She holstered the pistol and snatched her helmet onto her head, then hit the ignition and wasted no more time in that killing ground.

She exited onto the highway the same way she had come in. and swung the bike back around north before twisting the throttle open all the way. The synthetic engine sound roared as the powerful electric motor hummed between her legs and the bike gathered momentum. 

Hours later she was hundreds of miles away from her first kill. It would stay with her for a while longer though.

She stopped early that night, finding an abandoned gas station that had already been looted. Surprisingly little blood though, probably the employees had taken their severance off the shelves.

The milk that had been left in the cooler had gone bad, which soured her already bad mood. She picked through the detritus and found some packaged meat snacks and a few bottles of water and soda, and made a meal out of the snacks and soda. Further searching netted her a chocolate bar that had slid under the case and that improved the evening for her a little.

Before sunset, she propped the doors open and pulled the bike in and hid it behind the shelves, parked to be easier to ride out in the morning, then locked herself in the ladies room and spread her sleeping bag on the ground.

She had nightmares about wolves with girls faces chasing her through the darkness. She shot them and shot them but they just kept coming. Just as she was overwhelmed and one was sinking its teeth into her neck, she woke up with a gasp, and nearly screamed as a huge dark figure with white eyes stared at her from the corner of the room.

It made no movements and just stared back at her as she stared up into the glowing white orbs. She pulled the sleeping bag open and slipped out and backed away across the floor, dragging her things with her on the bag as she backed against the door.

The thing leaned forward and the light from around the door illuminated its face. A bare deer’s skull lined with black fur stared her in her eyes as she slid her hand up the door to the latch.

“Go, she needs you.” a deep but whispery voice said so softly in her head that she almost didn’t hear it over the thumping of her heart. As she registered that it had spoken to her, she did scream, scrambling out the door and crashing into a shelf, knocking it over and falling to the ground, still dragging the sleeping bag with her bags and coat inside.

She untangled the gunbelt from inside her coat and pulled the gun as fast as she could, but the door to the bathroom she’d come out of was already mostly closed on its automatic arm.

Mad, scared, and more than a little indignant, she kicked the door open, pointed the gun inside, and shot the first thing that moved. This proved to be a mirror, and her ears rang painfully from the enclosed gunshot. She swept her flashlight around the room, but found no huge deer-bear-demon things and nowhere one could hide.

She was suddenly very anxious to be very far away from this place. She opened the cylinder of her gun and replaced the spent cartridge with a new one, then quickly packed her bags up and tied them to the bike. She propped the door of the gas station open, then rode the bike out the door, picking up speed once again as she pulled onto the open road. The words it had said repeated in her head over and over. She needed her. She needed to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of the chapters I've worked on up to now, it'll be a few days between them for a while. Gotta make time for my Betas to read them.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, it starts a little slow.


End file.
